In order to reduce their size and bulkiness, headsets have been adapted such that they are suspended from or attached to users' earlobes by including loops (called earloops) attached to a housing that houses the headset's microphone and/or audio driver. In order to ensure a high degree of versatility, the earloop-housing connection is typically provided with freedom of movement to allow the housing not only to rotate relative to the earloop but also to pivot transversely to the direction of rotation. The microphone and/or audio driver of the headset or earphone (as appropriate) is typically coupled to a sound source and/or sound sink, which may be a cellular phone, MP3 player or other sound device by wires or wirelessly, e.g., via a Bluetooth® connection.
The problem with current earloops is the considerable number of parts, typically 4 to 5 elements that are involved in defining the loop and the microphone housing in order to ensure the degrees of movement discussed above. It will be appreciated that this increases not only the capital expenditure and cost of manufacture by requiring a large number of individual parts to be manufactured, e.g. by molding the pieces using individually designed molds, but also increases the time and cost of assembly.
The present invention seeks to address this issue by providing an earloop and housing connection (also referred to herein as the pivot post) with fewer parts.